Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2026-01-11: The Second Part of The Godfathers' Big Hit Edition

What happened during the week of January 5th - January 11th, 2026:

πŸͺ¦ The first full week of 2026 was a bit of a blur, both for personal and work reasons1. Let's tackle the reasons one at a time, with the bigger one going first: on Tuesday 01-06, shortly after 6 PM, my grandmother passed away at the age of 93. The last family member to see her alive was my stepmother, who spent a few hours in the afternoon with her, talking to her while holding her hand as her vitals kept decreasing. She left my grandmother in the waning afternoon hours, then once she got home in the early evening, the hospice center called with the news.

πŸ“‰ On the day before her death, the hospice center took my grandmother's vital statistics for what turned out to be the final time. Her pulse measured at 30(!) bpm, and her blood oxygen levels were at 70%(!!). In spite of those numbers, the nurses were convinced my grandmother would hold out to her 94th birthday on Saturday 01-31, as she was still drinking plenty of water. She had turned down food and regular medications for weeks, only surviving on big gulps of water and painkillers. However, she had told my stepmother many times that she had no desire to reach 94, and in the end she got her wish, proving everyone wrong in the process. My stepmother only half-jokingly said she will carve the words, "I did it my way," on the urn which will hold her ashes, and I wouldn't be surprised if she does that anyway.

πŸ‘΅πŸ» I may have more to say about my grandmother in a separate post. She will not have a church service, but instead will have a memorial held at a funeral home, followed by a family lunch. Both will take place in the northwest suburbs of Chicago on Saturday 01-17, so I may have a truncated update for next week.

πŸ€΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Side note: As I wasn't sure what was going to happen with my altered suit, I went with an alternate plan to buy separates. On Wednesday 01-07, I found a second-hand sport coat that only cost me $10. The next day, I bought two new dress slacks, only to hear upon returning home that my suit had returned from the tailor and was ready to be picked up. I'll stick with the alternate plan anyway, given that next week's family gathering won't be as formal as I had anticipated. All of these clothing items are now at a dry cleaner, with a scheduled pick-up date of Thursday 01-15.

πŸ“€ Work started out really busy on Monday 01-05, though it has fortunately calmed down as the week progressed. My on-call issue that vexed me over the weekend was resolved early on Tuesday 01-06, as the source of the user's problem had nothing to do with Epic whatsoever Β―_(ツ)_/Β―. I had no other on-call issues for the remainder of my coverage, but I was still happy to assign the on-call phone to the next person on Thursday 01-08. Regular work had a lot of meetings, a lot of reassigned tickets which were the responsibility of the team member that departed, and just a lot more busywork than necessary. I found these mundane tasks to be the only things I could accomplish on Wednesday 01-07, as that was the day when I was most affected by the loss of my grandmother. Perhaps busywork has its place after all?

🌊 L. was able to obtain a few travel guides for Southern California and San Diego this week, but the news of my grandmother's death hasn't made me eager to crack these books open. I'll see if I have the desire next week to read them; if not, they may have to wait until we are back from the memorial service.

β˜‘οΈ Following along the lines of last week's blog cleanup, I have streamlined the below list into a slightly tighter format.

A Couple Two Tree Items To Note From Last Week:

Outbound Actions

Internal Obligations

Media

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

For obvious reasons, I had a hard time concentrating on media this week, and I'm not even talking about the big mess happening *everywhere*. My grandmother's death affected many parts of my life, including my attention span for things I'd normally enjoy. Picking highlights for this week was tough, but I think I found a few items that were challenging when they needed to be, or calming when necessary.

First, let's get calm. The Resident Advisor set by crimeboys could best be described as 130 minutes of relaxing noise, and I don't mean that as an insult. It's a set that "sounds like a chillout room gone off the rails," as it's not exactly background music nor is it really upfront. There are parts that sound like they were taken from a horror movie out of context, which is why I wasn't too surprised to see a Skinny Puppy song in their set. On the other hand, other parts could be played in the background while shopping at a department store. An odd DJ set for my odd mood this week.

The visuals in the Really Interesting video could be described as calming, if you wanted to do so. Lots of playful cats and flowers were used to illustrate the higher definitions of Hi-Vision, an analog HDTV format created by NHK of Japan in the 1980s. The initial hope was that as other parts of the world transformed from regular to high-definition broadcasts, Hi-Vision could be used as a global standard. Similar to what eventually happened elsewhere in the word during the HDTV conversion, you would either have to replace your TV outright to view HDTV broadcasts, or you'd have to hook up a signal decoder to your existing unit. Broadcasts in Hi-Vision would have required new equipment for recording (possibly like the W-VHS recorders from the 1990s), or for viewing movies in HD. Hi-Vision became a non-starter in other parts of the word, as both American and European broadcasters went directly to digital HDTV, meaning VCRs gave way to the TiVo and DVDs.

And with that, the calmness ends and the interesting media begins. Veronica Explains, travelgeek, and PetaPixel examine the reuse of existing technology for different purposes. Veronica shows off an Asahi Linux install on a MacBook Air M1, which may not sound too exciting at first, but having an Apple Silicon SoC (system on a chip) recognize anything other than macOS is rather special indeed. Asahi's goal is to be usable as a daily OS, with Veronica pointing out how many of her regular Linux programs work flawlessly on the Asahi install. The only real limitations are with memory (which is the case with any OS), and how Asahi's reverse engineering of Apple Silicon means that only certain older M1 and M2 models are supported. In spite of these constraints, Asahi can be a viable answer for older Mac hardware that would either be traded in or otherwise abandoned.

Meanwhile, travelgeek visits Tokushima Prefecture on the Japanese island of Shikoku, a region that has seen significant depopulation over the years. The railways in this part of Shikoku have either dismal ridership numbers or have been outright abandoned due to the same. As a way to keep the rails in use while still serving the population in Tokushima, the Asa Coast Railway operates dual-mode vehicles that can ride on rails and on roads. Hidden railroad wheels inside the fenders of the bus drop down when rails are encountered, then raise up when it's time to drive on a road. The hope is that the flexibility of the Asa Coast Railway will not only serve the people in Tokushima, but act as a model for other depopulated parts of Japan and possibly elsewhere.

Last up on the repurpose front is PetaPixel's article about camera repairs. The return of film photography as a viable format has also meant that older cameras are being put back into circulation again. Many of these older cameras will need regular maintenance, particularly if they've been neglected for many years, but the hands refurbishing them are indeed older ones. The 20-30 year gap of digital prominence meant that a lot of film knowledge and experience evaporated in the interim, whether due to retirement or death, with few or any folks picking that information up for themselves. Camera shops and hobbyists may be the way to go for future camera maintenance, but there's no guarantee they'll last without younger hands taking over.

The Tides of History podcast is still in its study of ancient economics (paleoeconomics?), this time looking at the middle of the Roman Republic before the Punic Wars started. I honestly didn't think I would enjoy this particular topic, but I find myself listening to these episodes with a lot of interest. Perhaps it's due to how Patrick Wyman can make a compelling story out of seemingly trivial matters, or how he chooses to illustrate how ordinary lives were conducted in the shadows of "great men." He doesn't subscribe to the Great Man Theory of history, and I'm glad he's using this series of ancient economics to show why. Similarly, Cory Doctorow doesn't subscribe to this theory either, and in his long speech given at the tail end of 2025 in Hamburg, Germany, he rolls up his themes of interoperability, anti-circumvention, and enshittification into a powerful argument for a post-American internet. I've been reading Cory's newsletters for a long time, so what he says in this speech isn't exactly new to me. It is, however, a nice encapsulation of his views, and if you'd rather not read what he says, there's an attached video to watch instead.

Finally, there are times when you sit down to read an article or listen to a show, and you start formulating expectations based on how things start. These expectations carry your experience for a while, until suddenly something comes along that throws these expectations out the window, and you find yourself in unfamiliar territory. The Geographical Journeys article starts out with an unpleasant encounter at a house in Central Oregon, due to a flag flown on a porch, but then takes a twist that's ironically due to the same flag. To say more will spoil the surprise. Likewise, the recent ABV Chicago episode that reviews beers aged in Amburana barrels starts out normally by Ryan and Craig standards, but thanks to a Half Acre beer named after a monkey, the conversation quickly devolves into a tangent about a rare Sega Dreamcast game that uses a microphone to control...Seaman. "You can imagine where it goes from here."

  1. The title for this week's blog references this 1988 song by alt-rock band The Godfathers.↩

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